We’ve only been around for six years so far — I feel like that’s a pretty decent representation for women in the overall list of books that First Second is publishing, especially considering the very male-dominated past of the comics industry. Of course, it’d be nice if our girls/guys ratio was 50/50 — maybe we’ll get there in another five years.

But even though our authors aren’t equally male and female, many of the people we work with on a day-to-day basis are, starting with the people here in the Macmillan offices. Booksellers, teachers, librarians — we work with at least as many women as with men — and definitely many more women in the case of teachers and librarians!

Going to conventions and reading articles about the state of women in comics (and from the amount of questions we get at First Second about how terrible and stressful it must be for us to be working in this clearly massively male-dominated book industry), you’d think that women in this industry were some sort of imperiled endangered creature.

But seriously, you guys: women already here. In twenty-five years, we’ll have to have panels about Men in Comics (that rare breed of creature!).

FIRST SECOND is an imprint of Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, which owns some of America's most prestigious publishers, known for great integrity and literary quality. These include Henry Holt, FSG, St Martin's Press, Tor and Picador, all of which have garnered the most coveted prizes in publishing.